this lonesome gargoyle
by shriveledwankclaw
Summary: She lets the sin lick at her legs, her hips, making it's way up her spine like the flames that will burn her corpse.


i.

Éponine sees the girl around the city - most of the time in bourgeois areas, but sometimes in poverty-stricken centres, her and her father strolling the streets. They hand off francs to any poor soul with sunken cheeks and a dirty face. Éponine, despite the hunger in her stomach, does not hold out her hands for coins, but crouches in the shadows, her eyes pasted on the girl. She is an animal stalking her prey; but, like stray dogs chasing carriages, Éponine's got no clue in her mind what she'd do with her prey if she were to catch it.

_I remember you_, Éponine thinks. _When you were the skinny, hungry one. I was the pretty one then, wasn't I_?

The girl - Cosette - is so pretty now, is so soft and curved - that it is difficult to look away. Not that Éponine really tries her hand at taking her eyes off the girl - Éponine is greedy and will always take what she can of Cosette.

ii.

Despite her dreams of independence (and kisses and love and a full belly and -), Éponine must follow her Father's word if she's to remain under his roof - albeit leaking, it's the only roof she's got. Every few nights, she finds herself beneath a man, head leaning back on a consistently stiff mattress, her legs spread as if prepared to birth her shame.

One night, as a drunken blacksmith sloppily kisses down her concave stomach, Éponine pretends the lips against her skin aren't rough or chapped or fast, but full and pink and soft and slow. She closes her eyes. Éponine pretends the hair scratching the hair scratching her skin isn't that of an unkempt beard, but is long and soft and yellow. She can almost feel the yellow hair tickle her hard, dirty skin.

Éponine nearly moans.

iii.

She is following at the heels of a student - Marius Pontmercy, who seems to barely stand her - when he sees Cosette. His reaction is instantaneous - his eyes follow her, his jaw nearly going slack. Éponine, despite standing alongside him, does not notice his wide eyes or the twitching smile on his lips. She's too busy; her eyes, too, are following the girl as she walks with her Father. Cosette's skirts billow behind her, and, for a moment, her blue eyes look back over her shoulder. Éponine's breath catches in her throat, looking back into this girl's eyes. She cannot seem to remember her own name.

Marius is at her side the moment Cosette and her Father turn the corner. He asks her to find Cosette, her home, to bring him to her. Éponine is in such a daze that she nods blankly, her tongue feeling swollen in her mouth. Marius squeezes her hand in thanks before she can even realize what she's done. As Marius runs off, his rejected francs clinking inside his pocket, Éponine begins to - slowly - wake up. She scurries off the way Cosette left, her bare feet quick on the pavement.

iv.

Marius is so /pathetic/ and foolish with Cosette that Éponine wants to throttle him, wants to scream /why you? Why not me?/ But not even in her delusions can Éponine fool herself into believing she could ever be good enough, that Cosette could ever want her.

_I am the devil,_ she thinks, _and Cosette is an angel_. Éponine knows she is a sinner on a grandiose number of levels - that she is condemned. All her sins, she supposes, could be forgiven if not for her thoughts, for her desires. No matter, Éponine wants to pull this angel down to Hell with her.

v.

Shortly after Éponine threatens her Father away from Rue Plumet, she sits on the cold ground by the gate Marius and Cosette held hands through, vines tangling through it. She tries to forget Cosette and Marius' proclamations of love, but they echo against the edges of her mind, growing louder as the night grows colder. Perhaps Cosette staring wide-eyed at Marius, grasping onto him, was meant to be the push for her to move on from Cosette - if so, it wasn't a call answered by Éponine.

There is soft noise of someone walking through the garden behind her, on the opposite side of the gate, and Éponine jumps up, nerves on edge, turning to face the person approaching. It is, of course, Cosette, whose eyes she meets. The girl wears a nightgown, a ribbon braided through her yellow hair. There is a flicker of recognition in Cosette's eyes - Éponine is not sure if she recognizes her from the days in Montfermeil or from the streets. If the latter, the girl possesses the good graces to stay quiet about it.

After another moment of Éponine staring at Cosette in her nightgown, the girl speaks up.

"Your feet are bare."

Éponine almost laughs. Many times - usually under the weight of a heavy, sweaty, married man - she has imagined what Cosette would say to her if given the chance. This wasn't quite it, but it is Cosette, and it's been spoken to her, and that is enough.

"Yes."

She is silent another moment. Éponine thinks she can feel bile rising in her throat.

"Are you a friend of Marius'?" Cosette's voice is quieter, and it is now that Éponine notices the small envelope - labeled with loopy letters - resting between the girl's fingers.

Éponine does not want to find her voice - it is too rough and low and marked and ugly. So she nods.

Cosette's eyes move to the ground, overridden with vines and grass and flowers, but then they move back up to Éponine.

"Could you deliver this to him? It's… Important."

Éponine feels the bile rising again, but she nods vigourosuly, snatching the envelope through the gate from Cosette, and scurrying off around the corner.

She doesn't see it, her back turned, but Cosette's eyes follow her.

vi.

Before long, Éponine is back at the Café, her heart aflutter and her mind anxious. She's not sure why she's doing this; enabling a relationship only sure to decrease what minuscule chance she had at her desire. Perhaps it is simple enough that Cosette asked and Éponine could not refuse. She scales the stairs to the upper level - where Les Amis always seem to be meeting - only to interrupt Marius going on about Cosette; her hair, her voice, her eyes. Without thinking, she tucks the envelope into her dress, by her breast. It is uncomfortable there, but this is her statement against him, her equivalent of a dog snarling at it's master.

She does go and sit beside Marius, her nature easy and friendly. But as the night goes on, and Marius loosens more, she cannot help but notice what he grips in his hand - it's a small square of cloth bordered with lace. Éponine is sure it is Cosette's, and the moment Marius falls asleep, his own arms used as a pillow, she snatches it away selfishly, her greedy fingers unable to resist the temptation of a piece of Cosette.

Crouching in an alley, Éponine holds the handkerchief in her open palms - as though it is an answer to the coins she refused to take. She does not hold it to tight out of a fear of soiling it with her filthiness. As she sits in the dark, sleep evading her grasp, Éponine thinks that maybe this is her penance, her punishment for all her sins; for stealing, for abusing, for lying, for whoring herself, for everything. But Éponine does not atone for her sins; no, she revels in the sin, letting it lick up her legs, her spine, her hips, like the flames that will one day turn her corpse to ash.

vii.

Éponine does not give the letter to Marius; instead, she opens it, reading it over and over, pretending the pretty words are for her. Out of spite, she almost laughs; Marius can never find Cosette in her new apartment. It is cruel, it is animalistic, but Éponine is not surprised by her own behaviour. She was always so selfish. The eve of Lamarque's funeral, she binds her breasts, stuffing herself inside a shirt, pant and coat combination that is, altogether, too big on her. Éponine tucks her hair into a boy's cap, and makes her way to fifty-five Rue Plumet. She stands outside awhile, then she sits, her legs crossed like the child she always was.

Inside, unbeknownst to Éponine, Cosette watches a boy - no older than herself - sit down and watch the building. She wonders what he is looking for, but comes up empty. There is something familiar about him - something in the stature, maybe.

It's a long while before Cosette sits up, occupying herself with other tasks, and even longer before Éponine stands up, walking off to find a place to sleep.

Éponine has a feeling in the utmost base of her existence that things will be over soon, and yearns for the end.

viii.

Éponine is shot - almost entirely at her own fault - and she dies in the arms of Marius. She gestures towards her shirt, where, half-tucked into her bindings, rests a wet, bloodied envelope. Marius grasps it in his shaking hand, eyes swelling with tears. Just a boy, and he holds this girl as she dies.

"It's -" Éponine coughs, her body shaking. "From Cosette. I kept it from you. Tell her I'm sorry."

Marius nods that he will, and rocks the girl as she coughs her way to sleep.

ix.

The corpse is burned for lack of burial place - Marius too wounded to stand up to claim it, her parents not caring enough to spare the money necessary for a funeral.

x.

Éponine wakes up. Her breasts aren't bound, and there is no envelope by her breast.

There is, though, a square handkerchief bordered with lace in the envelope's place.

She always was selfish.


End file.
